Luno has opened a new front against draft cross-border crypto rules from national treasury and the South African Reserve Bank, arguing that they treat stablecoin payments inconsistently with South Africa’s international commitments.
Under the draft, Luno says, all payments in stablecoins – crypto tokens pegged to a currency, usually the US dollar – would be treated as capital flows rather than current flows, which cover payments for goods and services. The same invoice paid in dollars through a bank would not. Treating payments differently purely because of the instrument used raises questions, it argues, about consistency with South Africa’s International Monetary Fund (IMF) commitments and the Reserve Bank’s own methodology.
Luno traces this to what it calls a foundational error: regulating crypto assets by their form rather than their function. The manual puts bitcoin, stablecoins and utility tokens, which give holders access to a service on a blockchain network, under a single set of rules, it says, even though the Reserve Bank’s own research and frameworks recognise that they are different.
It is a longstanding Luno argument. Its submission on the draft capital flow management regulations, which Luno’s GM for Africa, Marius Reitz, criticised in April, called for bitcoin to be treated as an issuer-less commodity, stablecoins as payment instruments with their own regulatory workstream and utility tokens as infrastructure tools outside exchange control.
The complaint goes beyond the case made by the Catastrophe coalition, whose members include VALR, Luno, AltCoinTrader and EasyEquities, and which has built its public campaign around two other objections. It features in Luno’s submission on the draft crypto asset manual for cross-border activities, filed before public comment closed on 30 September.
Common ground
On the coalition’s two core objections, Luno is in step. The draft bars South African companies from moving crypto across the border in any direction, and Luno says companies get “no threshold, no exception and no way to apply”. It also opposes the self-custody rule, under which crypto can move from a local platform to a customer’s own wallet but cannot come back. That, it says, “will actually push assets offshore”.
Market makers, which keep local crypto prices in line with global ones, are almost exclusively companies, Luno argues, so shutting them out would thin trading and raise costs for buyers. The UAE, Singapore, the UK and the EU all include companies in their crypto frameworks, it says, and the ban contradicts the “positive bias” approach to capital flows that treasury and the Reserve Bank signalled in April.
Luno credits the draft for treating buying and holding crypto on a locally licensed platform as domestic, as Reitz had urged in April.
The authorities’ concern is circumvention. Nicola Brink, who heads financial stability at the Reserve Bank, warned last November that “as crypto payments are borderless, they present an avenue to circumvent exchange controls”. The central bank told TechCentral on 9 September that the manual remains “subject to refinement” and that its approach to stablecoins is still being worked out.
“We regard the draft manual as a starting point rather than a final position,” Reitz said. “Luno is committed to engaging further with the Reserve Bank and national treasury to refine the framework, so that South Africa does not fall behind.” — © 2026 NewsCentral Media
